Fudge!

As a child, I loved Judy Blume’s books featuring Peter and Fudge and I have found that I still love them as an adult.  I recently re-read Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing with a smile on my face, anticipating that moment (the moment I still remember 30+ years later) when Fudge swallows Peter’s turtle.  What makes these books so relatable?  The characters are completely understandable to children and adults.  Their actions are utterly believable.  Peter’s unhappiness and disgust at the adults around him who are completely besotted with Fudge’s behavior is palpable.  The sibling relationship is one everyone who has siblings understands.  Whether a younger child or an older one, we all have those memories of a sibling making us crazy, of a sibling breaking into our room to touch things that are ours, of being blamed for something that a sibling did.  The parents who do not understand us, who give more attention to the other child, who have no sympathy for our wounds when we are clearly devastated is also relatable to children and adults.

This is a story (a series of stories) about a family that is real, a family with real-life problems and real-life situations.  We are completely riveted to the story of Peter and Fudge.  Whether the story is told from the older brother or the younger brother’s perspective (as is done in later stories), we can relate to the angst and the trauma and the ultimate feeling of family that prevails in all of the books.

Judy Blume often broke with tradition in writing her novels.  In her books, Blume often dealt with taboo subjects like divorce, racial equality (as in Iggie’s House), and in the case of Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret, a young girl’s first period.  When I think of Blume’s groundbreaking novels, I often think of Blubber.  This book placed a spotlight on bullying when it wasn’t even acknowledged as an issue. 

Ultimately, I think what makes Judy Blume such an incredibly gifted writer is that she takes ordinary events and places a spotlight on them, shining this light on the minuscule moments of existence.  She brings what is taboo or forbidden into the light and allows all of us to experience these things, through the eyes of a child or a pre-teen or a teenager or one on the cusp of adulthood.  We see these events, we experience them through the eyes of a child and we relate, intensely, intricately, profoundly with the lives of the people she has brought to life for us.  How does she do this?  How is she able in one novel, some of them quite short, to make us completely relate to her characters and the events of their lives?

In the case of Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, she sinks us into the first person narrative of Peter.  When I compare this novel to Charlotte’s Web, I am amazed at what Blume was able to accomplish in a very short 120 pages, something that E.B. White was unable to accomplish in 184.  E.B. White’s narrative is detached in many ways, distant from the experiences of its characters.  We see them as if from afar.  Even when Wilbur is wailing because he does not want to die, or when Charlotte quietly passes away, we do not feel this viscerally because in many ways, we are not sunk into any one individual’s perspective.  We are kept distant from the narrative, perhaps through the use of its formal and stiff language.

By contrast, Judy Blume has us with Peter every step of the way.  We are not set apart from him.  We are Peter.  We feel with him, we endure with him, we mourn for his turtle with him.  And again, with him, we are outraged that no one, not once, acknowledges the tragedy of his turtle’s loss.  Somehow the gift of a puppy is supposed to make up for the fact that a turtle has died.  No one has any real respect for the life of that turtle.  No one but Peter.  We are gratified with him, when he names his dog Turtle, to remind himself, and perhaps to remind his entire family, of the turtle who once lived in their home and whom Fudge so thoughtlessly consumed.

Charlotte's Web

What is interesting to me when reading Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White is that I am as little impressed with it as an adult as I was as a child.  I know so many people love this story and it is a great, imaginative story.  However, I have always founds something lacking in the reading of it.  As a child, the stiff and formal language bothered me, as did other things I couldn’t quite identify.  As an adult, I know exactly what it is.  There is at times an inconsistency in the storytelling that drives me nuts.  We are several chapters into the story before we are given Wilbur’s perspective.  It is not until that moment that we have any inkling that he will be a talking pig (well, of course, I knew this from my memory, but in writing, it was very jarring).  We are receiving a very wordy description of the family, the farm, the saving of Wilbur by Fern, his move to the Zuckermans’ farm and her visiting him.  Finally, finally, on page 16, we have a scene with Wilbur and he thinks, “There’s never anything to do around here.”  Suddenly, the tone of the entire novel is changed.  This is no longer the story of a young girl and her pet pig, but it is the story of a barnyard full of animals who can talk.  Perhaps this is the genius of this piece, but I find it disconcerting.  Why did we not have Wilbur’s perspective from the moment he was born?  Why were we not treated to his observations of Fern and her aunt and uncle’s farm?  Why now at the Zuckermans?

Other small things like this would bother me as well, in the reading.  For example, we have multiple scenes with Fern observing everything that is happening in the barn except we are not even aware that she is there.  The first time she leaves and goes home and tells her family about the animals talking, I am amazed.  While we were told that Fern visited the farm regularly, she was not actually placed in the scene and we did not have her impressions of that scene.  She never joined the conversation or said anything, so we had no idea she understood their conversation (or frankly that she was even there, unless we took note of the picture placing her in the scene).  It was only when she repeated the conversation to her aunt and uncle that we realized she was there and that she had understood the entire conversation.  Even when she shares it with her aunt and uncle, we don’t really get any sense that Fern understands that it is unusual for animals to be talking or for her to understand them.

Another example of this is on page 104.  We have an entire scene with the animals trying to decide which word to write into the web next and Wilbur performing tricks for Charlotte to help her determine if he is radiant.  We then have two stories from Charlotte and she sings to Wilbur to lull him to sleep.  The text then says, “When the song ended, Fern got up and went home.”  Really??  I had no idea Fern was even there.  She wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the scene.  It’s like E.B. White suddenly remembered that he was telling a story, not just about the animals, but about the little girl who could understand them, and threw her in at the last minute, just to remind us that Fern existed.

These inconsistencies and in my opinion, lazy writing, are what keep me from fully enjoying Charlotte’s Web.   I do find the story itself to be enchanting and there is a sort of hypnotic rhythm to the words that pulls you in and does not let you go.  However, I am consistently and constantly jarred away from the story by these little moments and it severely limits my enjoyment of the story as a whole and, as a child, kept me from re-reading the book endlessly.  I was always the type of child (and adult) who would re-read my favorite books until they fell apart.  This book never qualified for such love and attention.

The Pigeon!

Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus is another favorite among my students.  They absolutely love to shout no to the pigeon when he’s begging to drive the bus.  What makes this book so funny and entertaining for kids? The pictures are definitely a huge part of it.  Somehow the simplicity of the pigeon is immediately relatable to the students.  The simple lines, with the extremely expressive eye and wings, give the pigeon emotion and complete relatability.   Then there is of course, the two-page spread where the pigeon absolutely loses it.  Children love this page.  They giggle and giggle and giggle because they completely relate.  The pigeon is not getting what he wants and it’s just NOT FAIR.

The simplicity of the pictures somehow gives added power to the speech bubbles that make up the story’s text.  A number of students in my class complained that these pictures were too simplistic and not very impressive.  I would argue that it is the very simplicity of the pictures that makes them so very powerful.  The pigeon is absolutely relatable to the students. For me, the text of this book is told in very simplistic, childlike language.  The pigeon is bargaining – repeating words like please and why not and I’ll be … Therefore, for me, it is very natural that the pictures would be simplistic as well.  The simplistic lines of the illustrations match the simplistic wording of the text. 

The pigeon is drawn much like a child would draw him or herself, as a simple line drawing, not quite a stick figure, but pretty close.  The words are exactly as a child would say them – “I’ll be good.”  The bargaining has begun.  For me, the text and pictures work seamlessly together, to create a story infinitely reasonable to all children who have been in that position – trying to convince the adults in their lives that their request is a reasonable one and that they deserve for it to be granted.

If You Give...

I love this entire series of books by Laura Joffe Numeroff.  They are fabulous books for teaching cause and effect as well as circular storytelling.  The pictures themselves are fun for kids, as in If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, when they detail the utter chaos the boy creates in responding to each of the mouse’s demands.  Then, of course, just as the boy has finished cleaning up the chaos, it all begins again, with the mouse’s request for a glass of milk (and by extension, a cookie to go with it). 

This book is wonderful in its predictability, though it is not always predictable in the ways that we expect.  For example, the boy stares in the mirror, decides to give himself a trim, after trimming, wants a broom to sweep with, then a mop for cleaning, then wants to take a nap, but needs a bedtime story that leads him to request some crayons so that he can draw a picture.  As each request is delivered, we understand and find the request to be a natural one, though we didn’t necessarily anticipate that particular request at the time.  It is only at the end, as he arrives at the refrigerator to post his picture, that we can anticipate what the next request will be – milk! 

There are any number of fun extension activities that can be done with this book, particularly around cause and effect.  I don’t just mean cause and effect in the text, but also within the pictures.  The request for a straw leads to a mess that we can see spilling out onto the page.  The request for a broom leads to dust clouds in every room and the request for a mop leads to suds across the floor. It’s chaos unending and it is quite enjoyable for students to analyze and talk about.

While the text indicates what the mouse is requesting, it is only through the illustrations that we understand the results of these requests. Similarly, without the text, we would not know what the boy’s motivation was, nor would we understand that the mouse was the driving force behind all of the boy’s actions.  Without the text, we would have only half the story. 

In essence, the text and the pictures work together to tell the complete story.  The text complements the pictures and the pictures complement the text.  Without both working together, we would have an incomplete story at best. 

Jumanji

I had never actually read the story Jumanji by Chris Van Allsburg.  It is hard to read it now, as an adult, without picturing the movie starring Robin Williams and Bonnie Hunt.  I read this book and immediately wanted to go watch the movie again.  I find the story itself to be absolutely charming.  The concept that a board game can affect reality is quite appealing.  Though the book is more simplistic than the movie, I was quite impressed to realize how true to the book the movie had remained.  I also found it impressive that the creators of the movie managed to expand what is arguably, a quite short story, into a full feature-length movie, without losing the feel of the book.  I absolutely love the fact that Judy and Peter are still the stars of the movie, and that the guide they release in the book turns out to be Robin Williams’ character in the movie.  Truly the movie did a superb job of transforming the book into live-action.  The characters in the movie are dressed much as they were dressed in the book and the set resembles the Van Allsburg’s illustrations as well.  Fans of Jumanji, the picture book, must have been thrilled to experience it as a movie.

Jumanji won the Caldecott award for its black and white charcoal pencil drawings.  The drawings show an immense amount of detail, to an extraordinary degree at some points.  For example, the drawing of Peter and Judy facing the adults at the end of the story is incredible.  Judy’s hair is finely drawn, each individual strand rendered in exquisite detail.  Similarly, her brother, Peter’s hair is carefully drawn, as is the expression on his face. In fact, I think the profile of Peter is incredibly well done.  The smile on his face, the shaggy cut, the look in his eyes – all of these combine to make an amazingly realistic portrayal of a young child looking up toward his older sister.  By contrast, the adults in this picture are featured from their necks down, with very little detail drawn.  They are very much in the background, while the children remain the focus of this picture.  It is an incredibly powerful rendering because ironically, the children stand with their backs to the reader, while the adults face the reader.  And yet, the children are the ones our eyes are drawn to, while the adults remain a faded background to the children’s vibrancy.

Good Night, Moon

Personally, Good Night Moon by Margaret Wise Brown has never been a favorite of mine.  I am not fond of the transition between the color pictures and the black and white ones, particularly as the transition never made sense to me.  At first, I thought the color pictures represented what was real and the black and white ones what was not real (i.e., the pictures hung on the walls).  However, this pattern was broken immediately with the second black and white set of illustrations. 

I also did not like how the original picture changed.  There was no old lady in the rocker originally and then there was.  This bothered me as a child.  While I understood the old lady was capable of moving and had obviously sat down in the rocker, I wondered where she had been originally, why she hadn’t been seated in the rocker to start with, or standing next to the bed.  Why did she suddenly appear out of nowhere?  This was unacceptable to me.  She should have been somewhere!  I remember, as a child, flipping back and forth from the first pages to the later ones, trying to find where she would have been.  She just wasn’t there.  And then she was.  It just didn’t make sense to me and that pretty much ruined the book for me.

In addition, even as a child, I had a strong sense that a book should tell a story.  To me, this book excelled at telling me nothing.  It was a book about nothing.  About saying good night.  I did that every night and I wasn’t much interested in reading about the process of saying goodnight, even if it was said to all the inanimate objects in the room.  I found it uninteresting in the extreme. 

For me, this book has always been the book you read to infants and to extremely young children before they are able to express their desire for a real story, and frankly, for real illustrations.  This was a book of the same illustration, over and over again.  The bunny moves in tiny ways, as do the cats and the mouse, but otherwise, everything is the same.  Except… the old lady disappeared again!  From one frame to the next.  I didn’t like that.  It might be realistic, but it annoyed me.  She had the ability to just disappear and we were not shown that.  Where was the love between the mama / grandmama / nanny rabbit and the child?  Where was the goodnight kiss?  Where was the picture of the old lady leaning over the child in tenderness at the end of the night?  I didn’t like the appearing and disappearing old lady who only ever said, “hush”.  There was so much wrong with this story that when I re-read it as an adult for this class, I had the same, exact, visceral reaction as a child – I immediately began cataloging its failings.  I am left to question why so many people love this story, when for me, it is (as my middle school students would say) an epic fail.

Daleks in KC

The Daleks have invaded.  I may be late to work on Monday…